As the debate over regional governance and local empowerment gains momentum across the UK, the Scottish construction and built environment sectors find themselves at a critical crossroads. With both the UK government exploring fiscal devolution and the Scottish Government signalling interest in substantive local governance reform, industry leaders are urging a strategic re-evaluation of how, and at what level, decisions regarding our built environment are made.
Dr. Jocelyne Fleming, Scottish policy and public affairs lead at the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), suggests that the time is right to interrogate the efficiency of current governance structures. Drawing on 25 years of devolved housing policy, Fleming notes that autonomy has historically allowed Scotland to pursue distinct, progressive paths—most notably in the evolution of statutory homelessness rights. However, she argues that the sector must now determine if the existing distribution of power is truly fit for the modern challenges of housing, infrastructure, and decarbonisation.
The principle of subsidiarity—the idea that decisions should be taken at the level closest to the people they affect—is central to the current political discourse. Yet, for those working within the built environment, the answer is rarely as simple as pushing all decision-making to the local authority level.
“Housing markets don’t fall neatly within local authority boundaries,” says Dr. Fleming. “Neither do labour markets, infrastructure requirements, training and education systems, or construction supply chains.”
The sector is grappling with the reality that different challenges require different scales of governance. While some issues benefit from hyper-local input to ensure community needs are met, others, such as regional infrastructure planning or the coordination of supply chains, require a broader, strategic oversight. The emerging national agency, More Homes Scotland, serves as a test case for this balancing act. As the agency begins to integrate funding and expertise, it will need to navigate the friction between national coordination and the regional flexibility required to deliver tangible results on the ground.
However, the conversation regarding the “right level” for decision-making is complicated by existing constitutional constraints. A primary friction point is the decarbonisation and retrofit agenda. While the Scottish Government can set ambitious targets to upgrade the nation’s housing stock and transition to sustainable energy sources, it lacks control over key fiscal levers, such as VAT, which remains reserved at the Westminster level. This misalignment between policy-setting powers and economic levers creates a significant bottleneck, where the ability to incentivise and deliver high-quality, sustainable building projects is tethered to a tax policy that currently limits progress.
As the political appetite for devolution evolves, industry experts are calling for a shift in perspective. Rather than focusing solely on administrative boundaries or predefined models of local government, the focus must move toward outcomes.
For the built environment, the priority should be to establish exactly what outcomes—such as net-zero housing, sustainable infrastructure, and resilient local economies—Scotland needs to achieve. Only by defining these objectives can policymakers work backward to identify which decisions need to be held nationally, which should be managed regionally, and where local authorities should retain the power to act.
Ultimately, the debate is about creating a structural framework that is agile enough to support the long-term health of Scotland’s built environment. As Dr. Fleming and the CIOB suggest, the question is not merely about who holds the power, but whether that power is placed at the level where it can be most effectively wielded to create the homes and spaces that Scotland requires for the future.
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